Fall is finally here, so Universal Studios Hollywood is kicking off haunting season Friday with its annual terror-filled Halloween Horror Nights. And who better to tap for such festivities than a master of horror, Rob Zombie?

The gruesome rocker, whose lengthy career has led him to become one of today's leading horror-movie directors, has long been a part of the Universal experience: it's rare to walk the grounds during these screamfests, let alone wander anxiously through one of the scare-stuffed mazes Zombie helps design, without hearing his extreme, event-appropriate music being blasted.

This year he's outdoing himself. Zombie has teamed with Universal's crew to create the amusement park's first-ever 3-D horror maze, with a fittingly obvious title: Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses: In 3D Zombivison. Those who dare enter will don 3-D glasses and take a trip through Captain Spaulding's Museum of Monsters and Madmen -- just like actors Chris Hardwick and Rainn Wilson did in Zombie's 2003 directorial debut.

Filled with characters straight from his twisted mind -- infamous psychos and serial killers Baby, Otis and, of course, gnarly, grinning ringleader Captain Spaulding -- guests will get terrified inside elaborate setups of the Firefly family home, Spaulding's museum, and the point of no return, Dr. Satan's lair.

“The thing I was most impressed with was that there are some pretty elaborate makeups in House of 1000 Corpses, so I thought, ‘Oh man, how are they going to do those characters?'” Zombie said during our recent phone interview. “They have really done some elaborate prosthetics on people, and I was very impressed.” [brightcove][bc3 height="320"]618062610001[/bc3][/brightcove]Though he's been on the road more than most years lately -- his Gruesome Twosome Tour with shock-rock forebear Alice Cooper, revived for fall to coincide with the opening of Halloween Horror Nights, initially ran in April and May, before he co-headlined the summer-long Mayhem Festival with Korn -- Zombie has been involved with the creation of this maze since Day One. Via e-mail he reviewed photos of everything -- props, character makeup, costumes, sets -- and was able to critique and change things as the project went along.

“The maze is in 3-D any way you slice it,” he insists. “But the 3-D really adds more to the design of the maze, where you can have a flat floor or a flat wall and with 3-D paint you can make it look like spikes are shooting out of the wall, and people will try to walk out of the way of things that aren't even there.

“The 3-D is going to make it all more disorienting -- and I'm assuming the more disorienting it is, the more people will be scared. The more you mess with people's senses, the more scared they get.”

Slammin' in ‘Dragula'

He would know. He likes to mess with people's minds in his films. And when he finds the time, he's been known to mess with them inside his mazes.

“Ten years ago I got into costume and stayed in a maze all night scaring people,” Zombie shares of the fun he had with his 2000 maze at Universal, based on his post-White Zombie solo debut from 1998, Hellbilly Deluxe. “It's the best. People get scared – and I don't mean people jump, I mean people get so scared they're crying, they're practically passing out. It's funny to see people in complete terror when they're in no real danger. I mean, people get freaked.”

Posing as a futuristic robot in a room designed around the song “Dragula,” Zombie says he'd choose his victims by looking for people who were already on edge, then mess with them without the crowd having any idea that the aggressive maze monster was actually him.

“The funniest thing is that Oscar De La Hoya went through that maze. I kid you not. Sometimes it happens, when you jump out at people, they react and take a swing at you. And some people hit me. Thankfully not him. That could have been big trouble for me. But it was funny jumping out at him.”

Intrigued by what the 3-D element could add to the maze, Zombie -- who has yet to walk through the final fright, though he hinted that he might cruise through it alongside the public Friday night -- says he's not so inclined to use that technology in his films.

“I'm not a fan of it, as far as movies go. I went to see Up and Toy Story 3, and those looked beautiful in 3-D, but for me … I mean, never say never. If the right project came along, sure, but with the movies I'm doing and interested in, it doesn't really lend itself to it.”

“Plus,” the guy whose movies often strive for brutal realism points out, “3-D doesn't work great with gritty.”

Advice from a Monster

The maze, however, is only one piece of the Universal/Zombie puzzle this season. The fully integrated picture takes into account not just his reputation to scare but his work as filmmaker and heavy-rock icon.

Zombie recently helped decide the victor of “Halloween Horror Night's Rob Zombie Film Competition,” which received nearly 200 submissions, horror shorts that ran from 90 seconds to three minutes. Along with Variety senior writer Marc Graser, Getty Images assignment editor Matt Cowan and Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights creative director John Murdy, Zombie and the judges narrowed down the entries to 10, which were then posted online for viewer voting.

The winner, Jasper by Elizabeth Schieffer of Dallas, was announced on Tuesday. She will be honored during the Eyegore Awards, also taking place opening night of Halloween Horror Nights.

Picking clear front-runners was easy, Zombie says. It was like a casting call: “the good things stand out quickly.” His overall advice for contestants: work on character development.

“The biggest thing that bothers me when I watch a movie is when I can't even tell the characters apart. You can have the coolest stuff in the world, the coolest effects and ideas, but sometimes you watch your typical horror movie, which always seems to involve a group of teens, and you can't even tell them apart. There will be three guys dressed exactly the same, talking the same, with the same haircuts. And then three girls -- all the same things.

“To me, the second someone watching a movie has to go, ‘Wait, what guy is that?' -- you're in trouble.”

Zombie will also be a guest at the Eyegore Awards, this year honoring producer/director/actor Eli Roth (The Last Exorcism, Inglourious Basterds, Hostel) along with Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future), Sid Haig (House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects), Betsy Russell (Saw) and Gina Holden (Saw 3D). The event will be hosted by actor Corey Feldman (The Lost Boys, Friday the 13th).

The Gruesome Twosome

Then there's the one element -- the concert -- that matters most to some fans, the ones who also were stoked to learn of the Friday arrival of a special edition of Zombie's latest album, Hellbilly Deluxe 2, including three tracks recorded specifically for the release and his first tour documentary. (“I usually never let anything behind the scenes come out because I feel it's behind the scenes for a reason,” he says, but he adds that “I figured out a way to make a tour documentary that I didn't think was demystifying.”)

Zombie & Cooper's Halloween Hootenanny: Gruesome Twosome Tour stop is also closely timed to the park's ghoulish makeover: Sept. 30 at Gibson Amphitheatre. For a $59 combo price, fans can score a seat at the show plus a ticket to Halloween Horror Nights to be used on select nights. “If I'm doing a show for Halloween, I want it to seem like Halloween,” he says. “This is Halloween to the max. You get the concert and then you can go to the theme park and into the mazes – I can't imagine what would be better than that.”

He's 45 now – he hasn't trick-or-treated since the late '70s, and he's been a working man on his favorite holiday for years. The only Halloween he can remember taking off, he admits, he took his wife Sherri to hear selections from The Phantom of the Opera at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Photos, from top: at the Grove of Anaheim, November 2009, by Kelly A. Swift, for The Orange County Register ... Hellbilly Deluxe 2 album cover ... on Fuse TV's Let It Rock program, August 2009, by Jason Kempin, Getty Images ... at Spike TV's Scream 2007 Show, with Alice Cooper and Slash at the Greek Theatre, October 2007, by Kevin Winter, Getty Images.

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